U.S. architecture firm wins Zaryadye Park concept competition

The Rossiya hotel was demolished in 2007, and since then the space has been Moscow’s most expensive vacant lot. Source: Press Photo

Diller Scofidio + Renfro, known for their design for the High Line park in New York City, will design a new park by the Kremlin.

Last week, officials in Moscow announced the results of a
competition for the best landscape concept a new park to be built on the site
of the demolished Rossiya Hotel, steps away from the Kremlin. The winner was an
international group of companies headed by the New York architecture firm Diller
Scofidio + Renfro, which designed the celebrated High Line.

DS+R architect
and Project Manager Zoe Small told RBTH via email that the main idea of the
winning concept for the park, known as Zaryadye after the historic name of the
site, is a wild urbanism: “a hybrid landscape where the natural and the built
cohabit to create a new type of public space. The Park
incorporates four Russian landscape typologies: tundra, steppe, forest and
wetland.

These zones are organized in terraces that descend from northeast to
southwest, with each layering over the next to create a set of programmed
spaces integrated into the landscape: nature and architecture act as one. Using
a unique paver system that seamlessly knits landscape with walking surfaces,
the Park is pathless and people are free to move about in entirely unscripted ways.”

In Zaryadye, the landscape will alternate between expressions of
climate zones typical of Russia, including the tundra, the steppe, forests,
swamps and an ice cave. Special technology installed in different parts of the
park will create the artificial microclimates.

The park will also include a glass amphitheater where the
temperature can be controlled by designated heating and cooling systems,
allowing it to be used year-round.

In Zaryadye, the landscape will alternate between expressions of climate zones typical of Russia. Source: Press Photo

Denis Leontiev, the C.E.O. of the Strelka KB (part of Strelka Institute for Media,
Architecture and Design), which developed the technical assignment and
functional model of the park said of the winning concept: “Only strong projects
made it to the final. But Diller Scofidio + Renfro offered the park of 21
century, answering to needs of the modern megalopolis. They offered a project
that will give Moscow visibility at the international level.”

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Competition participants were told to consider a budget of
between $171 and $230 million for the realization of the design. Deputy mayor
Marat Khusnullin has designated between 5 and 6.5 billion rubles ($150–200
million) for the construction, but stressed that this was a preliminary sum;
chief city architect Sergei Kuznetsov had said previously that the park would
cost nearly twice that amount. According to Khusnullin, the project will be
paid for solely with government funding without seeking outside investors.
“They would demand that there be commercial areas,” Khusnullin said.

At the same time, Khusnullin said that the park must cover
part of the costs of operation and suggested that a model in which individuals
or companies could adopt a tree or other natural feature could be used, like
the system at the Moscow Zoo that allows patrons to sponsor an animal.

Despite the attention paid to Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s
victory, the realized park may differ substantially from the concept. Another
competition will be held to select the chief designer of the park, who will
work according to a technical assignment developed by city planners.

Kuznetsov,
who will head the committee to select the designer said: “The chief designer of
the park will be chosen in a competition that will be announced soon, and it
will likely be a Russian company. “We do not have any law that says that the team that wins the
concept competition must be the chief designer, but Diller Scofidio + Renfro
will of course participate in the realization of the project.”

Kuznetsov said that two elements of the design will remain
unchanged, however – the observation area on the Moscow River embankment and a
partial closing of the Moskvoretsky Bridge over the river for pedestrians.

The competition to create a concept for the Zaryadye park which was announced by the Moscow City Architecture Committee in April 2013, attracted 87 applications from 450 companies in 27 countries. Work is scheduled to begin next year start and should be completed by 2018.

The Zaryadye area is as old as Moscow itself. It began as a
trading area along the riverbank but became an elite residential area during
the Middle Ages. Later is became Jewish ghetto. In the 20th century, there were
plans to erect one of Stalin’s skyscrapers there, but the project was still in
the planning stages at the time of Stalin’s death and it was later deemed an “architectural
extravagance.”

In the mid-1960s, the Hotel Rossiya was built in Zaryadye. At
the time, it was the largest hotel in the world. The Rossiya was demolished in
2007, and since then the space has been Moscow’s most expensive vacant lot. In
2012, the decision was made to use the space for a park.